Many computing systems operate with a single application having system-wide active focus. In such systems, input is automatically routed to the application that currently has system-wide active focus. For example, if a word processing application has system-wide active focus, keyboarding input will automatically be routed to the word processing application, for example to write sentences in a document. The system-wide active focus can be changed from one application to another application, but two different applications will not have system-wide active focus at the same time. For example, system-wide active focus can be changed from the word processing application to a browser application. After such a change, keyboarding input will automatically be routed to the browser application, for example to write a URL in an address bar.
In many systems that enforce system-wide active focus, there is no mechanism for diverting keyboarding input, and other types of input, to an application other than the application with system-wide active focus.